


Working Late

by OldTsuki



Series: Prompts Prompts Prompts [3]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Adult Bughead, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-12
Updated: 2018-04-12
Packaged: 2019-04-22 00:20:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14296656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OldTsuki/pseuds/OldTsuki
Summary: A little fluff written for the Bring Bughead to Work prompt on tumblr. Mr. Jones is working late to catch up on grading papers, and someone pays him a surprise visit.





	Working Late

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a little fluffy scene with a lot of description from Jughead. Thank you for reading ^_^

After the final bell, the students rushed out of their desks and into the hall. He’d asked one to stay behind, for a reprimand about checking their cell phone beneath their desk, but it seemed like he’d only blinked and half the room was already empty. He moved to the door of the classroom and assisted his colleagues in clearing the students out of the halls, trying to spot his wayward pupil. Of course, they’d probably skipped their locker and rushed right outside. Years ago, it’s what he would have done.

Returning to his desk, he stared at the pile of homework he’d collected throughout the day. It was organized haphazardly in alternating piles, some of the lined paper bearing fringed edges from where it had been torn out of spiral notebooks, other bits spotted with the remnants of after school snacks or cafeteria crumbs. He gingerly took the corner of a page and turned it to face himself as he dropped into the desk chair, eyes sweeping across the desk in search of a pen for grading.

A student unexpectedly stuck their head in the door. “Mr. Jones?” she asked, her brows knit together in concern. “I was wondering if I could turn in my paper tomorrow. I work, and I didn’t have time yesterday when I got back—“

“That’s fine, just email me when you get it done,” he interrupted, smiling reassuringly. Thinking back to his own school years, where he’d been filling the role of mother and father for his younger sister before his family exploded and he’d slipped into homelessness during high school, it was easy for him to provide extensions for extenuating circumstances. He thought of the meeting he’d sat through with Weatherbee earlier that month, where he’d been reminded of the zero tolerance policy for late work and threatened with a written warning in his personnel file. But those thoughts were easily chased away as he imagined his student returning from a late afternoon shift and choosing sleep over the daunting task of dissecting Frankenstein. Consider Maslow’s pyramid—psychology said that she couldn’t be expected to complete that work before her basic needs were met, he reasoned. If Weatherbee said something about it again, he might just mention that fact.

She departed, and he turned again to the homework. Fumbling about for his pen, unsuccessfully moving the homework pile and his lesson planner to see if it had been lost beneath either, he finally noticed it wedged under the edge of his laptop. He keyed quickly into the lock screen and opened the grading software, clicking his way through until he was faced with a column of empty boxes awaiting his scores.

He couldn’t help it when the cap of the pen slid past his lips to rest between his teeth. These responses were disappointing, to say the least. Half heartedly scribbled across the page, a quick glance confirmed that the student responsible hadn’t even bothered forming their thoughts into real sentences. The next sheet sported haphazard capital letters, like the writer had just sprinkled them throughout the assignment without an inkling of thought about when they should be properly utilized. There were only a few days left until their exam, he wouldn’t have the time to re-teach them these elementary grammar lessons if they were going to finish the unit content.

He was contemplating just passing back the stack and telling them to try again tomorrow when he heard his phone buzzing.

Shifting the papers, lifting the lesson book, then adjusting the laptop, he still couldn’t find it. Finally, he sat still and listened to the tell-tale buzzing. Oh, there—he’d leaned it against his pencil holder, and it was staring him straight in the face.

As his eyes fell on the screen, there was something much more pleasing than ungraded homework staring him in the face. A certain blue eyed, blonde haired woman was smiling at the camera as her name flashed over the top of the screen on the caller ID. He’d taken that photo himself over spring break, returning from which had felt like a slow descent into a Poesque madness.

Sliding his finger across the screen, he said, “Hello?”

The voice on the other end was one he’d sometimes imagine hearing in the halls of Riverdale High. They’d attended together, after all, several years before. Sometimes separating those memories from his present duties was difficult. He certainly hesitated outside the student lounge often enough before pushing himself onward to the space reserved for faculty.

“Hi, sweetheart,” said the bubbly voice on the other end. “What time are you coming home?”

He swiped a hand over his face and looked at the homework. “I think it’s going to be a late night,” he said reluctantly. What he wanted now, more than anything, was to slip himself into the waiting puzzle of that blonde’s body, entwine his legs with hers and wrap his arms around her, kiss her utterly senseless, and then sleep for the remaining forty days of the school year.

She was disappointed on the other end, he could hear. But they’d only just returned from their trip and he couldn’t let the grading pile up yet. Home stretch, he told himself. She said, “Just let me know when you leave, Juggie.”

Something heavy settled below both of his eyes, like the weight of the insurmountable pile of grading was transfiguring itself into tangible exhaustion. He knew she’d hear that there was no smile in his voice as he said, “Okay, Betts, love you.”

“I love you too,” she said, and at least he could hear the smile in _hers_. “Stay as long as you need to.”

But he didn’t want to, and he wanted to tell her that but there was no way of phrasing it without sounding petulant. Working for her family’s business, she was at least able to set up her laptop on the balcony of their apartment with a cup of tea, the steadily warming spring breeze tousling her hair as her eyes swept over the Adobe In-Design layout for print errors. He imagined that she was sitting there now, just placing her phone face-down on the table after hanging up with him.

As much as he envied her freedom to relax at home, he knew that she jokingly referred to her job sometimes as a kind of house arrest. Times like these made him think again about teaching online, but some small old-fashioned part of himself couldn’t imagine a classroom without books, pens, and papers.

He looked back at the pile and began shifting his way through. After the building settled into silence, it was easier to focus on the handwriting that danced before his tired eyes. He found a good working rhythm, slowly nurturing the stack of completed grading as it sprouted on the left side of his laptop.

It felt like no time at all had passed when the school janitor stuck his head in the door.

“Jones,” he said curtly.

He looked up from the grading, startled to notice that the windows of the classroom had darkened. Glancing quickly at his phone screen, he tapped the home button to bring it to life and swore quietly under his breath.

“Mr. Fallan,” he replied, already knowing what their short exchange would consist of. He thought of Betty, his stomach twisting unpleasantly as he realized she’d been waiting for him all this time.

“I’m going to leave for the night. I’ll lock up when I go, just make sure the door closes when you head out,” the janitor said.

Despite the feeling that he’d lost three hours of his life in the scant heartbeats he thought had passed from 4 pm until 7, he nodded. “Okay,” he managed, wincing at how shrill his own voice sounded after the lovely silence.

Fallan closed the door of the classroom. Alone again, he let out a long sigh and allowed himself to slump forward onto the desk, his head resting on ungraded papers in a monument of defeat. It felt like the harder he worked, the further he fell behind. Maybe he was doing too much. Everyone else left promptly at 4pm, when the faculty was clear to empty the building after extracurriculars wrapped up. They often joked that he was making them look bad. But deep down, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he had something to prove—to himself, to the school, to the town.

He’d been given a second chance with this position, and he knew it. Despite being at the top of his classes in college, despite finally marrying the girl next door, despite going ‘clean’ and shaking off the affiliations that had gotten him through some of the worst years of his life, he still felt deep down that an ex-gang member hardly deserved to be educating America’s youth. Some of his professors had told him that those experiences made him uniquely qualified, as he had a deeper understanding of the complex postmodern home lives that influenced student learning. He’d never quite believed it, himself.

He was just gathering the energy to lift his head, organize his desk, and call it a night when there was a knock at the door.

He frowned. With Fallan gone, he should have been the only one in the building.

Rising from his desk, and noting unpleasantly that the chair seemed to have conformed to his body while he was absorbed in applying red check marks to his assignments, he glanced out the small vertical window of the door.

The first thing he saw was the edge of a backpack, slung over the shoulder of a soft baby blue sweater. Surely the janitor had swept the building for students before leaving—although, he’d used the school as his personal homeless shelter more than once as a kid, so it was entirely possible that they’d been missed. He opened the door, words coming to the tip of his tongue as he prepared to ask what the girl was doing in the building so late.

Instead, when she turned and looked up at him through her lashes, his breath hitched.

“Hi Mr. Jones,” she said in a sultry voice, twirling a lock of blonde hair around her finger. “Can I come in?”

He glanced around the hallway as if someone might see them, though his mind reassured him that the building was empty. The question of how she’d gotten in after hours flitted across his mind but he dismissed it instantly—she’d always had her ways.

A smile tugged the corners of his lips, especially as she slid her arms around him and tilted her chin upwards. He leaned down and kissed her like he knew she wanted him to, his hands easily finding their favorite place at the base of her spine. Greeting exchanged, he let his smile fully spread across his face as he said, “What brings you in here, Mrs. Jones?”

She blinked innocently. “I just needed you to help me out with something,” she said, moving a step back so that she could swing the backpack off her shoulder. Holding it out, she smiled a bit.

He was immediately curious about its contents, but also hesitant. It was rare for Betty to come into his classroom. There were two large windows, and though he was acutely aware that teachers had gotten away with illicit activities in the building in the past, he didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize the job he felt lucky to have. With an ounce of excitement and a boatload of trepidation, he took the bag.

“What’s in here?” He asked, his uncertainty growing as he felt the weight.

She shrugged one shoulder, looking devilishly tempting in her cashmere sweater and short grey skirt. Her legs were smooth and still a little tanned from their spring break vacation, crossing as she slid herself onto a desk. “Open it and find out,” she suggested.

Still hesitant, he set the bag down on an adjacent desk and slid the zipper over. Instantly, a heavenly aroma filled the room. With steam wafting over his wrist, he looked over at her with wide eyes.

“Betty—“ he started.

She smiled. “I thought you’d be starving by now, working so late. It’s just takeout, I would have cooked at home but when you didn’t text or call—“

He kissed her, cutting her words short. He couldn’t fully form words to express his overwhelming gratitude. His smile returned, much more easily now that he could see her intentions in his workplace were purely innocent. Of course, he’d love to say thank you at home when they were alone together, but that would come later.

He drew back and tucked a lock of stray hair behind her ear. Drawing out a box of fried rice, he said, “Betty Jones, you really know the way to a man’s heart.”

She smirked, drawing out her own takeout container and two plastic-wrapped forks. “I just know you, Jughead Jones. There’s an extra fried rice, some potstickers, and general tso’s.”

As they ate at two desks that they pushed together, he felt some of the weariness slipping away from his frame. He still needed a long nap—probably a bit of a drink, if he was honest with himself—and some alone time with his wife, but the food was working its healing magic already.


End file.
